Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday PAC endorses three House candidates

BOSTON (Reuters) – A political action committee, formed this year with the goal of drastically reducing the role of big-money donors in politics, on Monday endorsed three candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives for their views on campaign finance reform.

The Mayday PAC, which says it has raised $7.8 million it intends to spend to back proponents of campaign reform, will throw its support behind two more Republicans, Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina and candidate Ruben Gallego of Arizona, as well as Democratic Representative Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire.

With the new endorsements, the group has now named five of the eight candidates it aims to back in the 2014 midterm elections.

The group plans to pick three more candidates in the coming weeks to throw its financial clout behind.

“When elected to Congress, they will help us reach our goal of electing a Congress to pass fundamental reform of the way elections are funded by 2016,” Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor who co-founded the super-PAC with Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist, said in a statement.

The group had previously moved to support Jim Rubens, a New Hampshire Republican seeking the party’s endorsement to run for U.S. Senate, and Democratic Iowa state Senator Staci Appel, who is running for Congress.